


Ruined Men

by bloodonmytypewriterkeys



Series: like a pair of open graves [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breathplay, Choking, Emily cockblocks her father, Enemies to Lovers, Hurt/Hurt, I KNOW this isnt the only fic where that happens, M/M, Masochism, Masturbation, Rimming, Slapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:17:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodonmytypewriterkeys/pseuds/bloodonmytypewriterkeys
Summary: A few days after Emily is restored to the throne, Daud wakes up to find Corvo lurking by his bed, with few words and no explanation. Faced with the consequences of their actions, both men have sworn off killing, but that doesn't change who they are. Daud still can't abide a mystery - like why the royal protector is wasting valuable time in the flooded district - and finds a different way to take his anger out on Corvo. Even if that means a drawn out game of gay chicken.





	1. Chapter 1

Daud was aware of his visitor before he even woke. 

He sat up slowly, though he couldn't imagine what would happen if he didn't. Could imagine it in stark detail, actually, but if Corvo hadn't killed him yet he supposed it wasn't going to happen until Daud gave him whatever satisfaction he demanded.

"Corvo." His voice was ever rougher in the mornings - daren't yet reach for a bottle of Old Dunwall to smooth it - but he didn't imagine that mattered now. What could they have to say to each other? Whatever Corvo wanted he would have it. Who could stop him? Who would bother trying?

Only as the seconds dragged on in unmoving silence did he realise what Corvo was holding in his hands. Looking through the void confirmed what he knew: a sickly yellow heart beating between Corvo's closed hands.

Its whisper was the thing to finally break the silence. The empress' voice, soft and tinged with anger. " _There is nothing you can take from him that matters. He is ready for death._ "

Daud glared at the accursed heart. "If I wanted to die I'd have done it." 

Corvo stood up, still in silence. If he could speak since his torture in Coldridge, Daud had seen no evidence of it. With his mask still on it was impossible to read any emotion from him. He stank of blood and sewers. Perhaps no worse than Daud himself.

"Have you had a change of heart?" he asked. He was too afraid to ask the more important questions, about the few of his men who remained, or did remain before he went to bed. He supposes that if they were still alive, the heart would have said something different. It was too much to hope that they simply didn't meet the heart's criteria.

Corvo tilted his head, and looked around the office Daud still inhabited. As much as to say _Have you?_

Daud does not know how to answer him that. He intends to leave. He has been intending to leave for two days now, which makes it his longest evacuation of a hideout by an order of magnitude. His men have been packed since before Corvo first left. In all honesty, some of them had been packed long before that, but he could live with that fact. Somehow they were all still here.

He didn't know what he could say to the bodyguard on that. He had nothing to say, no excuses to give. Corvo coming back to kill him at least took the problem out of his hands. It left them all where they would have been if Daud hadn't lose his courage at the last moment with his rightful killer before him. The heart was right: he was ready to die.

The bodyguard only waited, returned to look down at the heart as if it still whispered to him.

Daud groaned and got up, reaching across the floor to the mostly empty Old Dunwall for his breakfast. With every move he expected Corvo to get his act together and kill him, but the blow never came. Daud got dressed: no knife. Daud ate a tin of brined hagfish: no knife. He got bolder: oiled his wristbow, sharpened his sword, picked out his bone charms for the day, wrote in his diary (pretended to write in his diary), eventually kicking his feet up on the desk and read (pretended to read.) The knife never came. 

More than once he had to look around to check that Corvo hadn't simply left, abandoned whatever plan he'd had in coming here. But every time he looked, Corvo was somewhere to be found behind him. Sitting and watching in silence, as Daud pretended to go about his day.

The mystery of it grated as much as waiting for death did. What in the void was the man doing? Watching, waiting for something, doing nothing. Daud examined the book in his hand once more and realised that all this while the book he'd been pretending to read was _The Royal Protector_. He snarled and threw the book over his shoulder, freezing when he heard the soft thwack. Not the sound of a book hitting the floor.

This time when he stood and turned, he found Corvo half-way towards him, sword raised. 

Finally.

Daud is not holding his sword, but he does not need it. He transverses behind Corvo and kicks him in the back of the knee - or would have if Corvo were still there. With no more room above or behind Daud, Corvo is forced to blink to the side to attack him. This time Daud stays where he is, no desire to turn this into a chase of black magic in circles around the room. He lets Corvo's blade slash across his chest, through his shirt and skin, and punches Corvo's jaw. 

For a second Corvo drops, but he is gone before he hits the floor. Daud wastes no time transversing to his sword and feels his hand close over it in the same moment he hears the whoosh of air as Corvo blinks and drops from above him, his full weight coming to bear. Boots hit Daud's chest, knocking him back into a filing cabinet. The metal cracks against him, Daud feels blood and pain in one hard line from his spine to his skull. The smell of fresh blood overwhelms even the sewer's stench, there is so much of it. Corvo's gloved hand in his face, an Daud snarls and forces his numb arm to work, grunting with satisfaction as the point of his sword hit Corvo's thigh.

They stop.

Daud can feel his blood seeping out across the floor, his mind so rattled he can barely see Corvo, and if they remain in this stalemate he will finish it by dying of blood loss before Corvo has to do anything. Once again a traitorous cowardice makes him want to ask for his life. This time, he resists. Corvo kneels over him, straddling Daud's chest, but he is more heat than weight. The hand not pressed to Daud's jaw, pinning him still, holds the sword to his throat. There is no question a struggle would end in Daud's death. But his arms are free and he can feel the hard edges of his sword between their bodies. He would only have to press it in a few inches and Corvo, too, would die. Whatever satisfaction that would give him.

"I don't want to kill you, bodyguard."

The blade against his throat presses a little closer as he looks up into the mask's dead eyes. They are painfully close and Daud realises more with each breath he takes that he wants to live. It might only be years of habit not dying, but here and now he cannot accept his fate. 

And so he pulls out the dirtiest tricks he knows. If Corvo kills him for this, he will at least be killed for trying.

Daud shifts the sword slowly, keeping the point where it is. It could seem innocent, like his trapped arm is tiring, but now the flat of the blade digs up into Corvo's body, in the fraction of space between his thighs and Daud's chest. Not hard enough to hurt such a sensitive area but too hard to ignore.

He watches Corvo reflexively look down, the microscopic move of the mask, more tension now in his hands. The skin on Daud's throat breaks, blood trickling up. Millimetres from important veins, barely any further from arteries. Daud opens his mouth as much as he can, gasping quietly, Corvo's hand now over Daud's open mouth. Forcing him to think about it. Corvo shifts, keeping his sword where it is, enough for Daud to shift his hips. He presses against Corvo's leg. His hardness is not fake, but it is more for blood and adrenaline than it is for Corvo.

It is enough. 

Corvo recoils, faster than Daud thought even he could move.

Only when Daud tries to stand does he realise the flaw in his plan. There's no use getting Corvo off him if he can't go anywhere, and he has the slowly growing terror that his spine has been broken. No: he can move his legs. He can feel them. Still, when he tries to sit up the pain is so intense he sees nothing at all, thinks nothing, can't even hear the noises he is making. Finally he gets one hand on the chest beside him, white-knuckled fist holding him up. 

His brain automatically catalogues injuries. Damage to cervical and thoracic vertebrate, probable compression fracture. Possible spinal cord contusion, possible permanent damage. He raises his free hand to his head, sword long forgotten, feeling past the blood and the pain. Wishes his hair was even shorter, only complicating what little his fingers could feel. No depression, no soft spot, but when he pressed -

The hands catching his shoulders surprised him, made his gut tense, but there was nothing he could do now to flee. It had hurt so much, he couldn't tell if he blacked out or not. 

Corvo lifted him, and Daud's next thought was the numb realisation that he was crying. Reflexes. He ought to be used to it, but not while he was draped from the bodyguard's arms. He was dropped into the bed, face down, pillows shoved roughly under his chest so there was space for him to breathe.

The touch to his spine was so gentle it didn't hurt. Several more, like fingers walking down his spine. A knife that made him tense, and then a rush of cold air on his skin. His shirt cut open. An elixir pushed into his hands, and still Corvo lingers beside him. He takes Daud's marked hand - comforting? No, no: instructing him. Daud nods. "Leave. I won't have you kill them."

If Corvo was surprised it didn't show. He disappeared in a flash, and Daud wearily summoned his assassins. Heard Thomas' cry of shock, and then blessedly slipped into unconsciousness.

 

***

 

He woke once more to the sight of Corvo, perched on his desk watching him.

"You can't blame me this time for not leaving," Daud said, sitting up wearily. "Come on then, kill me already. I can't fight you this time."

The mask looked at him, its unblinking glass eyes black in this light. Daud didn't know what time it was - late enough to be dark, evidently - or where his assassins were. If they were conscious and alive they wouldn't be far. He couldn't quite bring himself to hope they were alive, but with any luck they were smart enough to stay out of Corvo's way. 

In the cup of Corvo's hands, the heart beat steadily. " _He has not killed anyone since... the empress. It has not absolved him of his crimes._ "

"No. It hasn't." He looked dead into the mask's eyes, waiting, daring him. 

Moving like it pained him, Corvo put the heart back into its pocket. Then slowly raised a hand and removed the mask. He let it drop to the table without any care, like the thing meant nothing. "I'm-" the word faded into hoarse nothingness and he struggled to try again. "I'm not going to kill you." In those six strained words, Daud heard six months of torture as clearly as if he was standing in the prison listening to the screams. The torture he caused. It might have been kinder to kill Corvo that day in the tower. It certainly would have saved lives. Corvo looked over his shoulder, staring through the walls in a way Daud recognised, before returning his gaze to Daud. "I'm not going to kill anyone."

 _There is nothing you can take from him that matters_ , the heart had said. Corvo would not take the whalers' lives, and Daud felt a pang of hope more painful than all his guilt. "Why have you come here, bodyguard? You have an empress to protect."

Corvo only looked at him, his face as unreadable as the mask. The lines in his face could have been carved in with a knife and were no less streaked with blood. Under his hood, his hair hung in dank strips, thick with grease and blood and filth. There was no evidence on the man that he cared for anything. Once again, Corvo looked through the wall. He stood up quickly and replaced his mask, turning to give Daud one last look through the lenses. 

"I'll leave tomorrow," Daud said. He could walk enough to get himself on a ship past the barricades. The trip would be hell, but what difference was that. At least if he was holed up in the bow of a whaling ship, Corvo couldn't haunt him.

"Don't," Corvo said, his voice muffled by the metal.

And then he was gone. What was that supposed to mean? _Don't_? Daud had begged for his life with the promise of leaving, had assured the man he wanted nothing except to leave this city. And now he was told to stay.

So they were going to stay. He supposed the new High Overseer, whoever that was going to be, was not going to be sprung upon him in the next few days. They would need a new base before the Overseers recollected themselves, but that wouldn't be tomorrow. There was work to be done before then.

He summoned Thomas to his office, doing his best to look like nothing had changed. "We need to get to work," he said brusquely. "We need to scout for a new base in the city. Somewhere that will be suitable even if the plague declines. And find out the likely candidates for High Overseer, see what we know about them. The empress will need lots of guidance, and not just from her Royal Protector."

"We're staying, sir?"

Daud looked up only then, to glare at his second. "No Thomas, we're doing this because we're going to live in Dabokva."

Thomas nodded quickly. "Yes sir." He hesitated still before leaving.

"Spit it out."

"Your visitor, sir. Should we..." he trailed off, seeming not to know how to finish that sentence. After all, what exactly could they do?

"Ignore him. He won't do anything."

Indeed, other than crack Daud's skull and order him to stay, he hadn't done anything at all. He just haunted him, like a ghost wearing a skull for a mask. "Yes master." And he was gone. 

Daud had no whiskey left to drink, and couldn't yet stomach a transversal or the walk up the stairs. He just sat in his chair, listening to the throb of pain in his back, and began to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fic since 2009 so it might be a bit rough. Sorry for the tense change in the middle but it just worked better that way. 
> 
> The title is borrowed from _if your heart is a bad thing_ , which you should very much heed the tags of before reading.  
> "[Corvo is] just as ruined as anyone Daud had ever picked up for a Whaler, and Daud knows how to handle ruined men."


	2. Chapter 2

He was woken in the middle of the day by the sense of being watched, and groaned as he got out of the chair. "Where is Her Majesty? Safe without her bodyguard?"

No response, of course.

He turned to face Corvo, still leaning a hand on the chair, not bothering to hide his weakness. So Corvo wasn't going to kill anyone, and neither was Daud. How was Corvo meant to do his job with such a restriction? At least Daud knew he couldn't continue his line of work and was making arrangements. How as a man meant to protect an empress with his hands tied?

"Can you still protect her?" He scoffed. "Could you _ever_ protect her? You didn't do so well the first time-" In an instant, a hand on his throat, the smell of the void still lingering. "We both know that's an empty threat." They were so close his breath fogged against the mask. He dropped his head forward to rest against the mask, breathing in the taste of it.

Corvo's hand dropped away and he took one step back, like he wanted to recoil but had forced himself not to. Too easily manipulated. Daud wouldn't have thought another Serkonan would be so easily repulsed. He'd been in Gristol too long. He wondered how many times he could win with such a move before he had to up the stakes. There was little of Corvo's body he could touch if he wished to, past the enormous coat and layers of belts and pouches.

"Prove it then," he said, breaking the tension. "You have the advantage this time." He gave Corvo a second to understand the challenge, then transversed out the window. He hit the walkway hard and skidded before he could find his feet, but still he was running for the river before he glimpsed Corvo on his tail. He felt the tingle of the void in his marked hand, a fraction of a warning before Corvo appeared behind him. He threw himself into the air, glimpsed the water rushing up to him before pulling himself through the void up to a ledge. 

His body ached, hands shaking as he pulled himself up, but the chase was hot in his blood. He knew the streets here better than his own marked skin, could reach for each ledge and foothold without looking for it, even knew where he had stashed Piero's Remedies. Not long ago he had been forced to ration every use of his powers, waiting days for his energy to return, and that practice was another advantage over Corvo. He slid into a rotting attic, grabbed the remedies, and froze as Corvo's shadow blocked the entrance.

Both of them waited, frozen, ready, at an impasse. "What are you waiting for?" he taunted. He moved one hand as slowly as he could, hoping Corvo wasn't watching him through the walls, unpinning a grenade and holding it for dreaded seconds. "Afraid to come in and fight me, Corvo?" He rolled the grenade quietly across the floor. If Corvo saw, if he had the energy left to use such powers, he could stop time, stop the grenade going off. But still he was waiting for some advantage and-

The explosion ripped through the rotten wood like tissue paper, and Daud had the pleasure of seeing Corvo recoil in shock before he was once more running. Forcing his body to move with no care for safety and pain.

He hit the ground on the docks, smelling the sewers nearby and the stench of Slaughterhouse Row carried downwind. The tower was on the other side of the Wrenhaven, a normally impassable distance without a boat. It might as well be a mirage for people on this side of the river. But he had done this before, had practised it with Whalers in careful preparation, and he waited with both remedies as Corvo caught up. 

Daud threw him a remedy, which Corvo caught by reflex. "You'll need it," Daud warned him, before sprinting to the edge of the dock. His jump carried him the essential extra distance and he reached out for the nearest buoy lighting up the river. It rocked as he materialised on its side, almost tipping him into the water as he stepped up onto the top of it and jumped off again, hitting the next buoy hard, momentum carried through the void.

A splash carried across the river as Corvo failed his first leap. Daud paused to look back, the hint of a rare smile on his face. Corvo resurfaced with a snarl, pulling down his mask and shaking his head like a dog. He simply swam for the next buoy, heedless to the weight of his enormous coat in the water and the drag of his boots. Daud knew exactly how hard that was. Just swimming in shoes was a hard enough lesson to learn for young whalers, even those who could swim to begin with. Corvo did not struggle, strong limbs cutting through the water faster than Daud would have thought. Getting closer.

He landed on the top of the next buoy and paused again to watch, as Corvo hauled himself out of the water and threw himself forward. Body against body, Corvo would likely be stronger than him. Daud had never built muscle that way, was always rather quick than strong. He was strong enough for hauling bodies around, for holding men down, for throwing off wolfhounds. Some of the whalers likely could have bested him in strength, but they wouldn't, and no one else had the skill to really make use of such strength. Corvo was the rare exception.

Daud drained his remedy and continued along the river, keeping his lead. He was still faster, and hit the pavement on the north side of the river while Corvo was still struggling on a buoy. Dunwall tower loomed above them, as it did in his memories. Guilt and anger twisted inside him, a feeling strangely akin to the tug of the void.

He kept running, but his body was starting to give in. He should have brought some elixirs too, though they hadn't fully healed his injured back. He faltered as he approached the wall, a climb so like the one he had made before. 

It was a lot of effort just to taunt Corvo. He turned, thinking what he could say to call off the chase. Corvo was pulling himself out of the water, onto the shore, once more soaked and furious. His dips in the Wrenhaven had washed off much of the blood and filth, replacing it with river water that wasn't much cleaner. Just looking at him, a wretched, traitorous part of Daud's mind said: _If only he'd been better._

The Royal Protector had come home in time to save his empress and still had failed. Daud had seen the three off them startle, realising something was wrong when the guards were absent. He had seen Corvo fight the whalers, while Jessamine and Emily cowered to one side. If Corvo had told them to run while he fought, if Corvo had not stopped when he believed they were safe, if he had seen Billie coming and moved before she could use her powers, if he had not been so careless with their lives, then things would be so different.

Daud knew exactly who was to blame. The Lord Regent had had a part in it, and Corvo might have done better, and the empress could have seen the plot coming, might have never sent her protector away... but in the end, only Daud could have killed her. Only Daud had the skills to send the Empire tumbling into chaos. But there was nothing to stop him doing it again, and that was a thought he couldn't live with.

It was Corvo's fucking job, his life, his responsibility to protect the new Empress. She was only a child, alone in a palace, and Daud could simply put a knife through her as easily as he had her mother. Anyone could. Her guards, her servants, her tutors. They wouldn't even need to be good at it, because she was a child and she trusted Corvo to look after her.

The anger was so hot inside him that it was kill Corvo or prove his mistake, so he transversed up to a high pipe and started climbing. By the time he reached the roof he was wet with sweat inside his coat, and still moving fast to avoid the guards. He didn't bother looking behind him for Corvo. Corvo could take any route through the tower that he liked, could ring the alarms and call guards to his aid and whisk Emily away to safety inside the tower's stone walls. If he managed it, Daud wished him every luck.

He didn't know where Emily would be, but he knew how to find the royal rooms. It had been a back up plan, if a weakly formed one. They hadn't had a chance to practice getting to the rooms, only got the best directions and done their best not to need them. He followed them now with some difficulty: hauling himself up to the very roof of the tower more by muscle than magic. His body begged to rest. Strange, in a way, that it should still try: that nerves should still signal such things as pain and fatigue when they were so often ignored. 

The balcony was a long way above the nearest ledge or hand hold, too far to transverse. But the drop from the roof was barely more than two storeys, a fall he could easily manage. He had no energy to spare on void gaze as he looked below, but his eyes were enough to tell him it was clear. He stepped off  the ledge, hand outstretched, and blinked through the air to hit the ground. Hard. Harder than he'd planned.

Kneeling on the ground, it was all he could do to breathe. His back spasmed with renewed pain, reminding him of the painful limitations of a healing body. He didn't have time to react as footsteps approached and he was hauled to his feet, shoved back against the railing so hard his feet left the ground.

Corvo was still damp from the river, his face unmasked, his chest heaving with breath. So he _had_ run. What a sight that must have been. His fingers dug deep into Daud's muscles, and Daud dug right back, holding on even with his fingers going numb. It was a long way down. Maybe he'd survive the fall but he didn't want to test the theory.

With nothing to cover his face, Corvo's anger was almost painful to watch. With no other avenue of escape, Daud started talking. "So you can protect your empress this time." Oh, Corvo's hands tightened at that, the pain nearly wringing a moan from him. If only Corvo knew what reactions this pulled from Daud's confused, oft-punished body. Most of his interest in sex was professional: a means of controlling people or a motive for others to employ him. But that pain digging its claws into him his body had ideas all its own, and tight pants added to his list of discomforts. "Maybe next time I won't stop to help you, and I'll get here in time to cut her throat."

The blow surprised him. Corvo was as fast as he needed to be, and Daud did not even notice the hand left his arm before knuckles struck across his face. He deserved it, but this was getting very dangerous. Only one hand now holding him in place, teetering on the edge of the balcony, and his breath was coming faster than he could justify. It had been a very long time since someone slapped him like that. He opened his mouth and was slapped again, and Daud did not have a chance to muffle his moan.

Corvo froze with his hand raised, staring straight down into Daud's eyes. It would have been embarrassing, but Daud had made a habit  of pressing his advantage now and regretting it later. He wrapped his legs around Corvo's, holding on with bruising strength lest Corvo let go with his other hand, and felt a hardness that didn't belong to buckles or bones. When he shifted his hips, as if only for balance, Corvo's breath came out harshly. Daud gave him the barest crooked grin. "Oh Corvo I had no idea." Corvo's hand clenched into a fist, still hanging in the air, but that would be no problem even if he did decide to hit Daud. That would give him the opening he needed to scramble to safety. He pulled himself closer, relaxing one hand just enough to slide it up to Corvo's shoulder, disguised the movement with another little quip. "You could have just asked, instead of following me for days." Slid his thumb across the collar of Corvo's shirt, fingers ghosting up the back of his neck. "If you'd asked nicely I might have said yes. If you asked very nicely." 

Corvo's hips stuttered forward, pressing against him, and the self-loathing that made him feel was visible. 

Daud closed his hand around Corvo's throat, tight enough to threaten, and this time his grin was only for himself. "You can stop this now. Just step back and let me go, and go back to your job, bodyguard." He flicked his eyes down Corvo's body to add to the argument, rolled his hips again. The moment he was free he was going to have to find somewhere safe enough to open his pants and fuck his hand, pressing down on the bruises left on him.

For a moment they only stared at each other in silence, then Corvo's mouth bit into his. The taste was only of blood, the same blood they both stank of. Daud tightened his grip before he realised it wasn't an attack, but Corvo only groaned.

It was a sliver of an opening, barely anything, Corvo's grip a fraction loser and his hips moving in predictable ways but no gaps, no escape. Daud could risk it, or he could stop it, or-  He tried to think of the last time he'd had sex and found he could more easily recall Billie's rendezvous than his own. They probably had a more significant impact on his life. But this felt good. It hurt and it was wrong and he still had Corvo's throat in his grip and he still might die if Corvo let go, and they were doing this so close to where he'd killed the empress, to where she'd lived and worked all her life, and- 

He pressed forward into the kiss, hard enough to catch their lips between their teeth, and he didn't have a beard to hide tomorrow's bruises but Outsider's balls this was worth it. He let his other hand relax, working it between their bodies to fumble with Corvo's belt. Stopping, distracted, to pull up his shirt and feel hot skin. Wet with sweat, like Daud himself. His stomach had little fat after all the time in Coldridge, but there was still a thick trail of hair leading down and he made the most pathetic noise as Daud tugged on it, scratching his fingers through it.

Clearly struggling for control, Corvo pushed his free hand beneath Daud's jacket and claw at his waist, his hip, working his way to press into Daud's injured back. It shouldn't have felt good, but the ache burned through Daud's whole body. He groaned, pressed his hips closer to Corvo's, felt their hard cocks straining in the same enclosed space.

He had to seriously consider how to win the next stage of their struggle. Corvo was clearly more familiar with men's bodies than Daud had thought, but he had still recoiled from Daud's false (not false now, he supposed) advances. He had limits that Daud had long since abandoned, and that was a weakness he could exploit. How much fight would Corvo put up before getting on his hands and knees? How much noise would he make, even as it hurt him? How long could Daud keep him there before he begged? The thought wrung another moan out of him, this time one that couldn't be called anything else. If he didn't get out of his pants soon he would break them. He let go of Corvo's throat, moving instead to pull his hair, and swallowed the desperate noise that resulted. 

"Corvo?"  They both froze, the sound of the young empress' voice unmistakable. "Corvo is that you?"

Corvo pulled back so fast he broke Daud's grip, turning to stare through the walls in a panic. He turned to glare at Daud, looking wildly around the balcony and above it for a hiding place. Daud looked through the walls, seeing the yellow shape of the empress almost at the door. And while he was distracted- a shove at his chest. He didn't even have time to struggle as he tipped back over the balcony, hurtling towards the roof of a building below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Daud. But you can't say he doesn't deserve it.


	3. Chapter 3

Daud wanted Corvo's arse, in more ways than one. He wanted to spread his cheeks, lick into him, make him come choking on his own pleasure and rub his face in it like a dog. He also, somewhat more immediately, wanted to just hit it. Hit all of him. Even have someone else do it for him, if he had to.

Corvo had pushed him off a balcony,  to a fall that could have killed him. Neither of them had really had the energy to stop time or anything dramatic like that, but Daud probably could have transversed past Emily without her noticing. Usually the exercise allowed him ample seconds to find a suitable destination, as long as he focused. Maybe it wasn't so for Corvo but there would have been some solution. One that didn't involve Daud falling, and reaching out with what power he had left for a balcony not quite so far below, to hit it with less lethal force.

He still felt sharp, clear pain shoot up his leg as he hit the roof with one foot before the other, dropping into a roll that nearly threw him off that roof as well. Once convinced of his safety, he stretched out on the roof and waited, exhausted. Whether Corvo came back for him or not, he was going to be here for some time catching his breath.

In the end, Corvo didn't come for him. Maybe Daud's lesson had had some effect, and he ignored the pang of strange discomfort that made him feel. Maybe Billie had been right about him going soft. 

Maybe he should never think about Billie ever again, considering how that thought had made him feel. Fuck Corvo (and he would, if the chance arose): that loss would be nothing by comparison.

Since Thomas didn't have the general suspicion or quite the instincts to trail Daud's every movement, no one was going to come and rescue him. So he crept in through an open window, found some elixirs and remedies, and took himself back to the hideout with a new limp to add to his slowness. He'd got off lighter than he would have expected from the fall.

When he returned (refusing to think of himself as sneaking back in to his own damned office), Thomas had reports for him and there were decisions to be made, scouting to be done of his own before picking a new workplace. He would need new contracts, too, and it would take some time to find an employer who returned so often as the former spymaster. Getting the word out that he was shifting to less fatal work would be difficult, delicate, would have been helped enormously by Billie's-

Maybe Lizzy would have something for him, just to get the ball rolling. Some offer of tracking down Annabelle and collecting the two fingers she stilled owed, if she was still alive, or scoping out potential targets. With an empress back on the throne, there were likely to be more ships on the river before long. Saving the Dead Eels time on wasted targets wasn't the work the whalers were used to, and wouldn't pay as well, but there were less of them now anyway. He would find jobs somehow.

He sent Galia to watch the Dead Eels and Lizzy, not sure whether to be pleased or annoyed by her good mood in the wake of all that had happened. Few novices had stayed. Most had been inclined to believe Billie that the changes were all for the worst and the Daud was not all he once was. The veterans who left had mostly, he thought, done so because they finally realised they could. Maybe he should be glad that Galia was still here and glad to be so.

For the first time since forming the Whalers, he seriously considered summoning one of them to his room for something other than work. Thomas would be willing. Not eager, but willing. Rinaldo would likely be more interesting. More challenging, quicker to understand Daud's orders for pain, and he would say 'Yes Master' in that Karnacan accent just like Corvo would.

Daud clenched a fist, torn between options, before slumping into bed with the same choice he always made. He pushed his pants down to his thighs and scratched over his skin on the way up to his half-hard cock. With a sudden, uncharacteristic desire to indulge, he fished a box of cigarettes from beside his bed and lit it up, drawing deep as he grasped himself. Void take him, this was going to be nasty and short. He let his lungs fill with smoke until they burned for air and stroked himself to hardness, thinking blessedly of nothing.

His strokes were rough and fast, the friction of his dry hand uncomfortable, almost painful. It was enough to make his hips buck against the bed, tiny shocks of pain shooting through him. Harder, harder. He held the cigarette in his mouth and dug his fingers into the bruises Corvo had left on him. There would be black fingerprints on his arm, the shape of Corvo's hand, a mark of his anger. Daud groaned, his cock only getting slicker in his hand. He lifted his hand to move the cigarette, gasping in the air, the rush of oxygen and nicotine together bringing him almost to the brink. He clenched his fist, making it a struggle, making it hurt. Feeling heat pooling in groin. Legs and back tensing with each thrust of his hips. His cock was glistening. The smell of sweat and precome mixing with smoke as he took another draw. So close now, teetering right on the edge of the infinite void.

Just a little more pressure, a little more pain to nudge him over.

Nearly, his thrusts stuttering. Nearly-

He pressed the cigarette into his thigh.

Pain and pleasure hit him like a corpse cart.

An orgasm like falling backwards into the void, a rush that knocked everything from him,  that same smell of burning-

For seconds afterwards he wasn't sure he could breathe. It took a feat of will just to remove the cigarette stub from his thigh and fling it at the garbage, where it would hopefully start a fire that killed him before he ever had to move again.

His clothes were streaked with come, the burn needed treating, he needed to...

He fell asleep, and for once didn't dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic finally earns its rating. I was going to finish in chapter three, but Daud deserves something good after the last few days.


	4. Chapter 4

Work resumed faster and easier than he would have thought.

Dunwall was not so easily changed in a week, and there were plenty of offers once word got out he was accepting. The machinery of politics ground on endlessly, new blood flooding into the space left by assassinations and Corvo's no witness policy. They tore into each other like rats, and those with the money and knowledge to do so approached him quickly.

He discussed the terms himself, turning many down without explanation. Those that he thought he could wrangle, he made a better offer: he would find an alternative solution, for two thirds the price. No, he would not kill them. No, he would not lower his price. No, no one would give them a better offer. There were not going to be new assassins in his cursed city. They could approach the gangs if they wanted to risk it but he made it very clear the whalers were not moving out. 

(Maybe they were. He still wasn't sure what terms Corvo's 'Don't' had implied, and he was well prepared to pack up and ship off to Karnaca at a moment's notice. But until then, this was his city. He hated its every street, every brick, every crackle on the speakers, but he would not give it someone else to destroy.)

Corvo did not come back to his room.

That was a good thing.

It meant he could get on with his life. It made it easier to continue not killing people. It gave his body a chance to heal. It meant that he'd eventually stop thinking about Corvo slapping him, and having to grit his teeth and resist the urge to just order Thomas, or whoever was near at hand.

He thought, very briefly, of visiting the Golden Cat.

He thought about inhaling a bottle of Orbon Rum and going to a whaler bar. Making his best offer to whoever looked meanest or sounded most like Corvo, and probably getting his face beaten in for the effort but maybe getting his cock sucked. Maybe, if he was lucky, getting both.

He thought about burning shrines, dripping blood on tarot cards, about pushing another cigarette into his skin. About everything and anything that might distract him or take care of the incessant problem in his trousers

Then he got a contract in the palace.

It was simple, unobjectionable. Find a blackmailing servant and impress upon them the consequences of their actions. Leave them with something to remember the experience. Nothing visible. Not a finger, but maybe a toe. Maybe a simple scar. 

Daud does not send a whaler to do the job, though he knows they are capable of it and the work is not yet enough to keep them busy. It is enough explanation to say that the contract is at the tower.

Not that they don't know about his visitor. They might not guess at the exact tangle of feelings and urges, but they know Corvo visits him. Why, then, should he not visit Corvo?

(Because he owes Corvo a debt as deep as the ocean. He has no right to deny Corvo _anything_. The inverse cannot be said.)

He does the work quickly, easily. The halls of the tower are still largely empty and the servant is easy to isolate. He muffles their cries as he breaks a rib with his elbow. By the time he summons the rats they cannot draw breath deep enough to scream, and he has their utmost attention as he stands amidst his swarm of rats and explains the consequences of a second visit.

The rats disperse, having done little more than torn through shoes and socks.

Daud walks the halls silent and unseen, searching with void gaze above him. There is a shrine: a collection of runes and charms, humming angrily very near the royal rooms. Corvo is not there. Corvo is, he realises, asleep.

That hurries his step: a fact about himself he doesn't care to examine.

In the end he has to go outside and up a pipe and back in through a balcony and fish a spare key out of the empress' rooms before he's able to get into Corvo's room. 

Daud puts a chair beside the bed and sits in perfect silence, but he doesn't know what to do next. Does Corvo honestly just sit and watch him sleep? _Why_? 

Corvo sleeps curled around the heart, sharp edges and all. It beats ominously, like it can see Daud and disapprove of him being there. Maybe he's projecting. Corvo doesn't look peaceful. He looks like even in sleep he is holding on by his nails. The room smells like him: the full breadth of smells inside and out of a body. The smell of blood and sour sweat should not make him want to breathe deep.

A quick glance through the void confirms that Corvo does not sleep properly armed. Of course there is a pistol within reach and his sword under the pillow, but his hands currently are at his chest, holding the heart to him. He is not wearing boots or his coat. 

Less layers between Daud and Corvo's flesh. Less layers to his blood, his bone, his heaving chest, the taste and feel of him.

That makes the decision for him. He _has_  to move.

Daud draws his sword. It's a precaution, he tells himself, denying the pleasure of seeing a blade against Corvo's skin. 

(It's not like he'd _do_  anything. He'd sooner let Corvo kill him. He knows he's a dead man, with only Corvo tethering him to the world.) 

The skin moves so slightly at the touch of metal beneath the jaw, and Corvo starts awake. His movement is enough to scrape some hairs from his jaw, and then he is still. His eyes bore into Daud. His hands clutch the heart.

They watch each other in silence - then Corvo raises a hand to the blade and pushes it away from his throat. Daud doesn't stop him but he doesn't help, either. The smell of blood blossoms between them. It runs between Corvo's fingers and down Daud's blade. He wants it on him.

He grabs Corvo's wrist in his free hand and holds him in place as he kneels on the bed, straddling Corvo's waist above the tangle of sheets and slept-in clothes. Corvo's free hand clenches on the heart (somehow, it doesn't cut him) but he doesn't resist as Daud leans forward and licks between Corvo's bloody fingers.

Corvo tastes like grime and sweat and so much blood. It's not enough. He wants to make Corvo regret letting him live. He wants to force Corvo's hand, get himself killed the way he deserved to be killed. To prove that neither of them can change: Corvo _will_  kill again. No one can make that kind of change, not after so much blood. And void is there a lot of blood: his mouth is filled with it. It smears across his face.

They're going to fuck, he realises perhaps too late. Corvo hasn't stopped him, hasn't tried, and he's only now realising why.

He yanks the sword free, hearing Corvo's grunt of pain, and lets go of Corvo's wrist to address the layers between them. Cuts through the sheets, the clothes, doesn't care what marks he leaves on Corvo's skin. Works around the heart but that is the only care he takes. 

(He hopes Corvo will put it somewhere soon. He can only imagine what it might say with its killer buried balls deep in its boyfriend.)

Daud lifts his hips a fraction to pull the fabric away from beneath them, and sees Corvo's cock half-hard, resting against his stomach. Against that trail of hair that had made Corvo whimper, and that thought is too much to resist. He shuffles back and leans down. The sword rests almost idly against Corvo's ribs, where it can cause plenty of pain but not so much damage, and he bites below Corvo's navel.

The sound Corvo makes fills the room. If it is not soundproof, every person in the tower will know what's happening before the end. Daud can only hope.

"Get on with it," Corvo snarls, his voice even rougher than Daud's. It sounded like every word hurt. Like even that whimper had hurt, and Daud was going to make him _scream_.

"No." Daud jerks his sword hand just enough to draw blood. "Do you think people will just obey you for the rest of your life? If you want something you can work for it." Still pretending this was a lesson.

If it was, Corvo took it to heart. He bucks his hips up, hard enough to unseat Daud, and pulls him down by his throat into a kiss that cracked teeth. His cock is trapped between them, making him hiss as it bumps against the rough fabric of Daud's pants. "Off," Corvo growls, pulling at Daud's jacket. "Take it off." He shoves Daud back, making it an order.

Daud finds himself sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off boots and jacket, stripping calmly. The mental image of fucking Corvo while fully clothed is a heady one, but Corvo is watching him intently and stroking himself. There's no resisting anything that makes him do that. Daud stands up to kick off his pants and Corvo watches with the focus of an assassin, like Daud is his target, and Daud can't resist the urge to fuck with him. He undoes his fly, pulls out his hard cock - Corvo's jaw tensing at the sight - and gets back on the bed.

"I said-"

"Fuck what you said," Daud snaps. He strokes his cock hard and fast, Corvo watching him the whole time, until the head is beading with precome. He strokes over it with his thumb, collecting the fluid, and raises it to Corvo's mouth. Says nothing, only waits.

Corvo grabs his wrist in a grip bordering on bone breaking, sending sparks of pain through Daud's body, down to his cock. And then he pulls Daud's thumb into his mouth and licks it clean. Licks up the taste of Daud's cock, sucks his thumb, bites down hard. Daud groans, his other hand clenching uselessly. 

That apparently is what Corvo has been waiting for. Suddenly, faster than should be possible, Daud finds himself slamming back onto the floor. Corvo is on top of him, naked, hard, somehow in control. His ass rubs over Daud's cock and they both tense, fighting against the noises that could draw out of them.

"Oil," Daud says, looking uselessly around. Corvo grinds his ass down again as he thinks, then reaches for Daud's own clothes. The elixir will do.

They cooperate long enough for Daud to slick up his fingers. He presses the first into Corvo's hole and this time they can't fight the noises that come out of them. A second finger and Corvo arches, hisses, pushes back against him.

This time the slap does not take Daud by surprise. It still turns him on more than he can bear. It sends heat coiling through his chest and gut, trickling down to fill his cock. "Harder," he growls. The next blow splits his lip, blood bubbling over his mouth, and Corvo bends down to kiss it. Bite it. He drags his teeth over the cut and Daud fucks his fingers in as hard, as cruelly as he can. There's just no way Corvo could feel as good as Daud does right now. "Harder," he manages to say into the vicious kiss, before pushing a third finger into Corvo's hot, tight body.

Corvo bites down hard enough it might tear through Daud's lip, then pulls away and spits the blood back onto him. He is too in control. With some effort, Daud find's Corvo's hand with his, finds the cut from his sword, and digs his thumb into it. Corvo jerks and his hole clenches around Daud's fingers. It should be no surprise that Corvo too reacts to pain this way. 

(Daud doubts that Corvo shares his single-minded interest in it. He cannot imagine the late empress doing this. They probably went slowly, kissed each other's every curve, prayed at each other's bodies like shrines. He doesn't want to imagine their sex life, their secret loving, conceiving a daughter, parting ways for the last time, what they must have imagined of Corvo's homecoming night. That is so far from what he wants to think about. But if he did, he doubts Jessamine Kaldwin the First would make her bodyguard bleed.)

Control of the situation is slipping through Daud's fingers more every second. That is _not_ how this is going to go. 

He fucks his hand into Corvo hard and deep, until Corvo moans and presses back against him, rocking back against that spot. With such a distraction it's easy to grab Corvo's hair with his free hand and flip them on the floor. Elbows banging into a chest, head cracking on the floor, Corvo's weight twisting Daud's wrist, both of them cursing and snarling. Daud pulls his hand from Corvo's body and uses it instead to pull his thigh to the side, opening him up long enough for Daud to get his thighs between Corvo's. From there it is easy to keep the other man pinned, one hand in his hair and one on his hip, sliding now to wrap around Corvo's cock.

They struggle against each other, sweat-slicked and sliding, growling, their cocks bumping together in delicious pleasure, their thighs struggling, biting, panting until Corvo gets a hand on Daud's throat and cuts off his air.

It's so unbearably good that Daud nearly comes.

When he has some fraction of control, he presses the only advantage he has and pushes inside Corvo's ass.

Corvo groans. Daud can't make any noise, his mouth gaping, his lungs burning. It feels impossibly good. It feels like Corvo is killing him. Slowly, brutally. They both know it's a worse way to die than a knife to the heart. Daud deserves worse. He doesn't deserve this: this feels too fucking good. He's going to choke out and die, breathless and fucking Corvo better than either of them deserve.

White spots fill Daud's vision as he pulls out and pushes slowly back in, and the feeling doesn't help. Corvo's hand tightening automatically doesn't help. Daud yanks Corvo's hair hard, once, before letting go and grabbing his other hip. Soon he won't be able to do anything but claw at the hand on his throat, and he hopes when that time comes Corvo flips them, pins him, rides his cock long after Daud can want anything more than air. He wants to die buried in this ass and right now it feels like he's going to.

He pulls Corvo's hips back to meet him as he thrusts, putting everything behind the task: all the muscle and will so honed by killing. The sound of skin slapping fills the room, followed by Corvo's slowly growing groans. His free hand - his marked hand - covers his face, tries and fails to muffle his cries, fingers clenching until the mark shines bright. 

Daud's lungs scream in protest, his every muscle now lacking oxygen. He doesn't know how he has made it this far but it won't be much longer. He can't see - has to remember the incredible sight of Corvo laid out before him - and his body is moving on to more desperate warning signs. He gags silently, drool pooling on his tongue. For now he manages to keep his hands on Corvo's hips, only digging them in harder and harder as the urge to struggle rises. The marks he's leaving will look like wounds in the morning: welting red scratches from his slipping grip, bruises so deep they're black.

He needs air. Corvo's hole is hot and tight as a fist but he needs air. He wants this desperately but he _needs_ air.

Almost against his will, Daud's hand goes to Corvo's, clawing it away from his throat. He needs to breathe, he needs Corvo to ride his cock but he needs-

Corvo lets go and air rushes into Daud's lungs.

It hits Daud like a punch in the gut.

He comes nearly instantly, mind blanked by the rush of air and the white-hot burn of orgasm.

Some seconds later he manages to pull out of Corvo with a groan and look down at the sweating, aching, painfully hard body beneath him.

In that moment, he is too satisfied and Corvo too desperate for any antagonism. "What do you want?" Daud asks. Willing to do anything he is told.

Corvo's eyes narrow in suspicion for a moment but he too knows they are beyond games. "Eat my ass." His voice still a wreck.

Daud does as he is told. Corvo's thighs over his shoulders, hoisting the other man's hips up, he licks into Corvo's used hole. Corvo jacks himself off with soft, needy noises and Daud does his best to reach every drop of his own come with his tongue. When Corvo's moans get higher, when he can feel muscles clenching around his tongue, Daud pushes his thumb inside and that's all it takes. Corvo cries out - a pained, desperate noise - and he comes in hot spurts over his own stomach.

He doesn't know how long it is until he gets his feet under him again and gets dressed, leaving the royal protector still strung out on the floor. His throat burns and his mouth tastes like ass and he wants to do it again and again and again. But they have places to be and only Corvo has the excuse of sleep. Daud has finished his work and he should be back. No one would challenge him for being late, but they might wonder. He has learned of late to care more about their unspoken thoughts.

He can't imagine what they will think of his bruised throat. There will be no hiding it. He imagines if you held Corvo's hand up to it even now, you could match the print to each of his fingers. Marked, as surely as the Outsider marked them.

That sour thought sits heavily with him as he pulls on his coat and drops out the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more wildly unedited and with inconsistent tense, but ehhh. I've still got lots of thoughts for these boys so I might make it a series, but this seemed like a good place to finish this fic. Thanks for the comments! Let me know what you'd like to see more of.


End file.
